


Familiar Faces

by WritingToKeepMySanity



Series: monstrosity 'verse [3]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, F/M, I pretend to know lawyer terms, Jack and Kath are married because Claire said she'd track me down if I didn't marry them, Kelly Kids, Monstrosity 'verse, Spot and Kath are bros, the Spot-Conlon-is-a-lawyer-hc-lives-on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 08:46:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13923567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingToKeepMySanity/pseuds/WritingToKeepMySanity
Summary: Katherine remembers a friendly face, long after the fact.





	Familiar Faces

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this idea in my head of Spot being an intern for the prosecuting firm in Lucy's case and couldn't quite shake it...
> 
> Simultaneously takes place four years before and eleven years after the events of "Found You".

The courtroom was too packed, and Katherine thought she might suffocate. She was squeezed in on the hard bench next to Ralph and Joey as they listened to the opening statements.

The words floated over her head, sounding far off and muffled, like she was underwater, but she didn’t really care about them. It didn’t matter what they said.

Because her sister was gone. Lucy was dead.

She found herself staring holes into the back of the dark head of a guy about her age, sitting on the bench behind the prosecution’s side. His hair was neatly combed while his suit looked secondhand and a little worn in places.

As though he could feel her staring, he shifted in his seat, turning around and catching her gaze. They only held eye contact for half a second, if that, but there was something… familiar about him.

Squirming, she looked back down at her notebook, where she hadn’t really been taking any notes on the proceedings.

Katherine was only supposed to be taking general notes, an overview of the case. Denton hadn’t wanted to put her on this particular assignment, even though he’d promised her the next big trial. When he’d found out it was her sister, he’d given Iain, their resident head investigative reporter, the article, and asked Katherine, who’d almost pitched a misdirected fit, to provide general facts.

But she already knew the general facts. A car plowed through a crowd of people, hitting her sister and killing her. There was a trial, the man would likely go to jail, and they'd never see Lucy again. So she gave up trying to listen, choosing to doodle aimless swirls in the margins instead.

Suddenly, the crash of the gavel shook her out of her trance, and Katherine looked up, slightly dazed. The jury had been excused, and the crowd was standing, filing out of the courtroom.

“Kitty?” Joey asked softly, nudging her. Her normally-energetic younger brother didn’t seem right, so subdued and somber. “Are you ready to go?”

She wasn’t. Once they left the courtroom, they’d be bombarded with reporters, wanting to know what they thought of the proceedings, what they thought should happen to the driver.

Katherine wasn’t feeling up to facing it just now.

But she nodded, squeezing Joey’s hand and standing with him, slipping her notebook in her purse.

They stood at the edge of the bench, waiting for a break in the flow of people to make their exit. The crowd was thick and, being too emotionally exhausted to be assertive as she normally was, Katherine though they’d be stuck there forever.

But then the young guy who’d seemed so familiar caught her eye on his way out, and something flickered behind his dark, hickory-colored eyes.

Before she could read too much into it, he blinked and stopped just before their bench, gesturing for them to go ahead of him.

Nodding and murmuring a quiet thanks, Katherine tugged Joey by the hand still in hers, and they filed out with the rest of the congregation.

A week after the trial ended, she’d long since forgotten about the boy, and was trying to forget the trial itself, when Iain walked up to her desk at the office, gripping a file folder in his hands.

“Hey, Katherine.”

“Hi, Iain,” she said, looking up at him, rubbing her eyes with one hand. She hadn’t been sleeping well. The nightmares…

“I just wanted you to know… the article’s running this week. About—about the trial. And I thought… you might—” he thrust the folder at her awkwardly. “Here. It’s all the notes I took from the trial, anything the lawyers would let me have.”

A cold feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. She shook her head, refusing to take the folder from him. “Iain, I can’t—”

“I know right now isn’t a good time, but I thought… One day. You might want it.”

Katherine didn’t want to take it, no matter how well-meaning the gesture was. She didn’t need the reminder of what she’d just had to go through.

But she stretched out her hand, taking the folder from him, nodding as he turned and left.

Then promptly stuffed it in the bottom drawer of her desk.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

Fifteen years after the trial, Katherine finally pulled out the file of notes Iain gave her.

It’d stayed in her desk at work for years, until she was promoted and got her very own office. Cleaning out her old desk had revealed the old, slightly faded file.

Katherine had brought it home and stuck it in the old filing cabinet in the corner of their office until she was ready to look at it again.

She’d slowly started opening up Jack about Lucy in the last fout years or so, telling him stories about the four of them growing up, how Ralph may have been the oldest, but Lucy acted it, how they used to stay up, talking late into the night.

And just last night, Katherine had told him she wanted to tell him about Lucy’s death—the _whole_ story, not the abridged version she’d told him on the rooftop eleven years ago.

“Ya don’t gotta do this, darlin’. Not if ya don’t want ta,” Jack reminded her as she hesitated, her hand shaking slightly.

Setting the file on the desk in their shared office, Katherine reached for his hand, taking a deep breath as she flipped it open with the other.

Right on top were the crime scene photos, and she gripped her husband’s hand tightly as she turned her head away.

Hard facts were one thing, but seeing Lucy and the car… and too much red…

Katherine shuddered, and Jack pulled her closer, slipping the photos to the back of the file where they couldn’t bee seen.

Turning back slightly, resting her head on his shoulder, she took in Iain’s surprisingly neat handwriting, reading the notes he’d taken so many years ago.

 _This_ she could handle. Cold, detached facts that she could pretend where about someone else, not her beautiful sister who died too soon.

“Hey, Kath,” Jack said, pointing to the prosecution team. “Isn’t that the firm Spot useta be with?”

Squinting at the names—really, thirty-eight wasn’t _that_ old, she shouldn’t be feeling it like she was—Katherine nodded. “I think so. Before he joined the legal aid for the nonprofit.”

Running a finger down the names, Jack stopped at the last one. “Well, I’ll be damned. Lookit that, Ace.”

The name above his paint-splattered finger read _Sean Conlon_.

“Ya remember seein’ him?”

And, suddenly, she saw it in her mind’s eye, the young man in the threadbare suit who’d let her and her family go ahead of him out the courtroom. “You know… I think I do,” Katherine said, nodding slightly against his shoulder.

“S’kinda cool, huh? The two’a ya meetin’ ‘fore ya were even introduced?”

She was suddenly overwhelmed with unexplainable emotions, bubbling up inside her. Katherine didn’t know if it was the resurfacing of Lucy’s case, or finding out one of their closest friends had been there in her darkest time, but tears welled up in her eyes.

Turning her head further into Jack’s shoulder, she took a shaky breath and he kissed the top of her head.

Before she could answer, there was the pounding a little feet and their three-year-old daughter skidded into the office.

“Mamaaaaa! Daddyyyyy! Petey won’ lemme play wit’ the iPad!” she said, stomping her foot.

“Did tha timer go off?” Jack asked her, allowing Katherine to compose herself.

Pouting out her lower lip, she muttered, “Nooo…”

“Then it’s still Pete’s turn, isn’t it?” Jack reminded her gently. “When the timer goes off, Corey gets it for twenty minutes, an’ then it’s your turn, right?”

Pushing her lip out impossibly further, their daughter said, “Yeah…” Then, noticing Katherine for the first time, she asked, in a not-quite whisper, “Is Mama okay, Daddy?”

Jack started to say something in response, but Katherine took a slight breath, shaking her head before turning to the girl with a brilliant smile. Holding her arms out to her daughter, she said, “Hey, Lucy-girl. Come here.”

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

Later that night, after they’d tucked the kids in, Katherine went back to the office, straightening the papers they’d left on the desk to put away for, oh, another fifteen years or so.

Picking up the paper with the prosecuting and defensive teams, she smiled slightly again at Spot’s name. She pulled her phone from her back pocket and took a picture of the neat print, sending it to Spot.

_#tbt ;) thanks for being there._

His response came almost ten minutes later, just as she was about to crawl into bed.

_no problem kathy_

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: I have v limited knowledge on courtroom proceedings, or any legal matters, really, (even though I have taken one (1) business law class, and read three (3) John Grisham novels;) ) so I gloss over it _pretty_ heavily and don't focus too much on the trial itself, but Katherine's internal thoughts. 
> 
> I'd love to know what you think!!
> 
> Comments, concerns, and critiques welcome! Peace, love, and sanity!


End file.
